


Struggle Session

by lepidopteran



Series: Mutually Assured Destruction [3]
Category: The Young Ones (TV 1982)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Coming Untouched, Communication, M/M, Oral Sex, Rimming, Semi-Public Sex, Trans Male Character, alt alt title: sonnets of the assholes, alt title: big brained genius vyvyan basterd, and the feelings are 100, the consensual violence is like 99, the sex is like 1 percent of the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:22:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25113070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lepidopteran/pseuds/lepidopteran
Summary: Vyvyan’s jaw aches. He can’t try to put words around why he can’t put words around himself; can’t say how his head works in beats of blood and snaps of static that never quite match up to language.
Relationships: Vyvyan Basterd/Rick (Young Ones)
Series: Mutually Assured Destruction [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/811485
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18





	Struggle Session

**Author's Note:**

> found this in my drafts and since i've noticed a little traffic on my other young ones fics recently, i figured it's time to inflict this one on the public
> 
> reading the earlier installments in the series will help for context, but if you don't feel like it, just know that vyvyan is a gnc trans man and he & rick have arranged to consensually beat each other up ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

When Vyvyan looks at Rick he sees skin stretched over bone; clenching, jerking muscles; the violent pulse: carotid, ulnar, radial. If the sleeves of Rick’s dressing gown ride up to his elbows, he can almost spot the brachial. When he kicks off those stupid red shoes, the lower extremity of the posterior tibial. He counts off the beats: just at the point when the rhythm hitches and accelerates, he knows it’s time again. Knows he’s under Rick’s skin again, right where the blood pushes at the bottleneck.

For his part, Vyvyan knows how to miss just right. In the disorganized tangle of Rick’s body he sees a chart mapped out clear, every point of weakness where the sick-pale skin will split and bruise, the long bones fracture and break. Every fatal hit marked in bright red spots that glare against his eyes. _Warning_ and _never_ and _wrong_. So he misses the softest parts of the skull at the occipital and temporal, to break a two-by-four right against that sturdy frontal dome. Unconsciousness without death. Concussion without brain damage (much). He knows just how much to push and keep Rick right here, and with him, and ready for more. 

Mike is untouchable, almost sanctified by coolness, and Vyvyan will never lay a hand on him. Neil is a pushover, passes out at the slightest touch, like a cardboard box in a light breeze. Vyvyan hits Neil to get him out of the way, never for sport. It’s no cure for boredom, just a fast-acting, short-lived nostrum. But Rick. _Rick_. 

Rick struggles. Rick fights back. Scrawny though he is, he somehow gives as good as he gets. Vyvyan can track the strain of stringy muscle when Rick pulls back for a punch, deltoid and trapezius shifting under a tight blazer. But Rick more often fights dirty, and that’s how Vyvyan likes him best: teeth, claws, any makeshift weapon he gets his girlish hands on. A disorderly, disordered whirlwind of lanky limbs that bend and grapple almost against anatomical reason. Almost. Vyvyan learns to track these movements too, to anticipate Rick’s next move. 

Dodging means frustration, and Vyvyan likes to see Rick frustrated. Tumbling down the cellar stairs; chasing Vyvyan through a new cavity in the wall; swinging out the upstairs window and down, crushing Neil’s flower garden. Always ready to throw another hit, no matter how few land: tenacious, like a badly trained terrier. 

Rick leaves Vyvyan with wounds and bruises and _anger_. A delicious, tangible anger that never dwindles, just swells at his core. Every fight adds a new layer, til the anger spreads beyond the boundaries of everyday girly _feelings_. It becomes something unspeakable, raw, monstrous. It’s something like hatred but more ferocious.  
  
If he were dim enough to tell her, Vyvyan’s state-mandated shrink would say it’s obsession, or fixation. Something that could be dulled by the right balance of talk therapy and sobriety and medication and, ultimately, a dispassionate surgical removal of Rick from his life. Not a fucking chance, lady. Not a chance. 

They’re rolling against the hall carpet, Rick’s hands just tight enough around Vyvyan’s neck and Vyvyan’s elbows locked under Rick’s armpits. Rick’s nails cut into the tender skin at the base of Vyvyan’s skull, and he spits, “Take it back, take it back, you _bastard_ ,” spraying saliva on Vyvyan’s jaw. “I’m not a suck-up.”

“There’s a Get Well Soon card to your precious _Professor_ Morrison that says otherwise,” Vyvyan says, struggling to wriggle one hand around to Rick’s front. The press of Rick’s palms pushes his trachea narrow, and his words come out breathy, strained. 

“Because _you_ put him in hospital, you absolute brute,” Rick says, bringing a leg up and pressing the heel of his boot against Vyvyan’s tailbone. The move brings their crotches dangerously close, and Vyvyan grinds down, til it’s painful for both of them. Rick winces, eyes squinting. 

“What’s it to you?” Vyvyan taunts. “I break arms _all the time_.” He finally maneuvers his hand out from the vice grip of Rick’s armpit, and fumbles between their chests til he can get hold of a nipple and twist it hard. Rick gives a satisfying yelp.

“But this was uncalled for—”

Vyvyan wins Rick’s hand, locks their fingers together and presses their joined forearms to Rick’s throat, cutting his words short. Too much talking. Still he says, “I didn’t like how he looked at you.” 

The words hang in the air. Vyvyan regrets them right away, but he can’t, can’t, can’t say so. Rick quits squirming; his only movement is the heavy rise and fall of his lungs, each breath pressing his chest against Vyvyan’s. 

“You’re jealous.” The accusation is whisper-thin, squeezed past the pressure against Rick’s throat—and Vyvyan realizes he’s relaxed his grip; now it’s Rick holding them close, forcing their parallel radii against his own larynx, forcing Vyvyan to confront him.

“No,” Vyvyan grunts. Not _shut up_ , not _piss off_ , just _no_ , because Rick has it all wrong. 

Rick’s watery eyes scan Vyvyan’s face. Looking for the truth, inasmuch as Rick believes in “truth”—which Vyvyan knows isn’t much, so it’s no real surprise when a smirk overtakes that ratlike face, as Rick reaches a conclusion that his sometimes shockingly narrow mind can accommodate. 

Abruptly Rick tilts his pelvis up and Vyvyan locks his muscles to hold back a full-body shudder, feeling for all the world like _he’s_ the one slowly and gently asphyxiating. He wrests his hand from Rick’s and wipes his sweaty palm down Rick’s front. Rick bucks up into it, digging the sharps of his scapulae into the carpet for leverage to arch his spine, and Vyvyan thinks of the aches that will cause; thinks that later he’ll wrestle Rick into someone’s bed and dig his thumbs into Rick’s back to work out the knots. 

“You want me all to yourself, do you?” Rick says, tone close enough to questioning that Vyvyan holds out hope that Rick will _get it_ after all; save Vyvyan the agony of explaining himself. But then Rick starts dribbling filth from those chapped and blood-wet lips, a half-remembered erotic poem Vyvyan recognizes from a battered fourth-hand Rimbaud volume he once used as a blunt weapon. Apparently Rick kept it, mistaking it—how stupid—for a gift. 

“Ecstasy olives! Seductive trumpets! Throat sucking almond-sweet limes—”

Vyvyan is generous enough to warn Rick with a preemptive murderous look before he reaches _Moss-circled, female, promised land_ , but instead Rick finishes—still in his oratory tone—“Get up here and sit on my face!” and Vyvyan isn’t ready to interrogate the swell of lust brought on by that display of artistic license. 

Rick smears his wet open mouth against the grimy denim over Vyvyan’s straddling thighs; pops the button and twists the zipper in his haste to tug down Vyvyan’s jeans, pushing them just low enough that he can maneuver his sharp jaw over the waistband and press his nose to Vyvyan’s pelvis. He reaches up to open the fly of Vyvyan’s boxers, and the first cold contact of a searching tongue makes Vyvyan hiss before he’s hit with a deafening crash of pleasure. Then it’s all hot muscle lathing over slick swollen tissue, nerves jumping three steps ahead of thought. 

Vyvyan gets a hand around a hank of greasy hair, pressing Rick closer until he moans, soundwaves fast absorbed—maybe _seductive trumpets_ isn’t so wrong. Vyvyan’s hand slides til it traps the back of Rick’s neck and this, just like fighting, is also a way to feel a pulse. Nice try, Arthur, but this is no tear-bottle, no nest of sobs, just a long rattling yell that threatens the stability of walls.

Somewhere far, far away, a door slams and Neil says something pathetic and entirely unimportant. 

Rick breathes hot and shuddering against Vyvyan’s iliacus, ragged fingernails clawing into his gluteals. “Get your paws off my arse.” Vyvyan shoves Rick away and up, snakes a hand down to find a seeping dampness at the front of Rick’s threadbare pinstripe trousers, presses a grin against razor burn. Does it really matter if Rick doesn’t “understand” him? Does it?  
  


*  
  


Vyvyan wanders through the hospital—snoops into operating theaters, interrogates a hapless surgeon, trades barbs with a former classmate here for her residency. There are endless ways to occupy himself, in a hospital. His mind is entirely off the bedside where Rick stays for what feels like hours with _Professor_ Morrison. It’s only every so often that he stomps down that hall, checks that the plastic curtain by the cot is fully open and that Rick sits a safe distance away. 

Vyvyan knows he shouldn’t worry, seeing as he broke both the good professor’s arms. No more wandering, groping, hanging too long around Rick’s waist, slipping too low. But it’s a pity he didn’t get to the old man’s tongue. He left him with a voice to feed Rick leading backhanded half-praise—as dangerous to Rick, Vyvyan thinks, as any touch. 

It’s easy to coax Rick into your pocket. Vyvyan knows because he’s done it. But he’s always been upfront about what he plans to do with Rick now that he has him. 

Vyvyan is out in the parking lot, gnawing on a large rock he found on the ground, when Rick finally emerges. The sun is sinking low. The rock tastes lightly of petrol. 

“You think I’ll let you put your mouth on me when you’re always _licking_ actual _rubbish?_ ” Rick complains, before he pulls Vyvyan close and bites down on his bottom lip. 

“You took your time,” Vyvyan says, but only when they’re home, Rick sprawled across his bed, revealing bruise after bruise and allowing Vyvyan to daub salve over each one.

Rick squints up at Vyvyan and bats away his hand. “You know I’m _using_ him, right?” When Vyvyan doesn’t respond, Rick gives an exaggerated sigh and sits up. “Morrison has _connections._ So long as I let him _believe_ I’m his _protege_ , I gain access to ever-higher echelons of the literary world, until I can bring those elitists to their knees. But he’s _establishment._ I would never actually _listen_ to him.”

Rick is explaining so patiently; Vyvyan’s head swims. “Still. I liked what you did. Hurting him for me.” Rick narrows his eyes. “Although you left me to pick up the pieces. Would it hurt _you_ to say what you’re thinking, _ever?_ ”

Vyvyan’s jaw aches. He can’t try to put words around why he can’t put words around himself; can’t say how his head works in beats of blood and snaps of static that never quite match up to language, every thought holding endless others, half of them meaningless, a thousand plateaus of _shit_ —no thought worth the teeth-pulling effort needed to squeeze it down the narrow channel of verbal expression. 

So he says, “I’m never thinking.”

Rick snorts. “Silly me.” Pulls Vyvyan down to rest on his chest, not complaining when stars leave indents in his sternum. 

Vyvyan wants to be telepathic. Wants to beam all his thoughts straight through those stars, into the heart thrumming below him. Rick’s brain couldn’t handle it, he thinks. It works too much like it should. But his heart—small and faltering, weak enough that Vyvyan worries—might; there’s space enough in the uneven breath between beats. Or his stomach, which can properly digest nothing and is possibly inhabited by a sentient tapeworm, therefore perpetually empty, surely has room for a second universe of ideas. Vyvyan considers a machine that would wire brain to stomach, and for a moment unifies his scattershot mind around a list of requisite materials, before he drifts asleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> the poem is rimbaud's "sonnet of the asshole"  
> http://bookkake.com/2009/03/02/lidole-by-arthur-rimbaud/


End file.
